EFT Helps Desert Storm Vet with PTSD

EFT Helps Desert Storm Vet with PTSD

Dear EFT Community,

Carol Smith, EFT INT-1 shares her experience working with a Veteran of Desert Storm and his PTSD and how his healing was effecting all areas of his life and how getting healthier can impact the other people in our lives.

-Stephanie M


By Carol Smith, EFT INT-1

Today I finished my 6th session with my second Vet!

He was an ideal student and very eager to learn and heal. He is a Desert Storm Vet, lets call him “Jim.”

Here is some background.

Jim said on our first visit that he was very tired of being on all the medications that the VA was prescribing. Fifteen different prescriptions all at the same time! He said that he just wanted to get his life back.

He said his whole family was dysfunctional due to the PTSD issue, and that his wife was suffering from the same PTSD, migraines, insomnia, and other similar issues that he has. Jim was a very attentive client and most eager to try this new EFT modality just in case it would help him.

He has been in the VA “talk therapy” for years, and still attends weekly support meetings that focus on PTSD. He said that most of the people that attend these meetings just show up, but never improve or change for the better.

Each week during our sessions he did his homework tapping, and picked up EFT very quickly. With each session he usually had a starting SUDS rate of 8 to 10+ on the issue we would be working on. By the end of every session his SUDS was at a zero.

I always pushed him a little at the end, just to verify the SUDS and see if there were any additional aspects of the issue that we had not totally collapsed.

Zero.

Jim said that this was the first time in many years that he felt able to go out hunting for game (solo) and be OK with it. He was so thrilled that he could do that now. This was an aspect on one of our sessions.

And, he did say that he had to stop and tap during the outing to go on, but once he did all was well.

Jim said that his healing from our six sessions was rocking the boat at home, and we talked about him getting healthier and how that can threaten other people that don’t know what to do with the changes for the better, or tapping for anything other than his own issues.

Jim wanted to be “normal” again and I could see he was well on his way.

I’m looking forward to the 3 month and 6 month followups with Jim to see how the EFT training has held for him.

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Free help for vets at www.stressproject.org  or connect with me at carol@tappingnavigator.com

 

Battle Tap for High Stress Jobs

BattleTap: 
BattleTap is an online tapping program customized for veterans and active duty warriors. It’s designed to bring EFT right into a veteran’s home, to be used any time he or she feels emotional distress. For the last year, dedicated volunteers have been developing BattleTap using the latest online technology. It’s intuitive and easy to understand, with a rich video, audio, and graphic interface. Users enter the text of their distressing memories into the program, and score their distress on a scale from 0 (no distress) to 10 (maximum) distress. BattleTap then guides them through using EFT, and then re-scores the severity of their problem. The software keeps a record of their issues and their progress, so that they can see if they’re improving. It also offers them a discussion group where they can ask questions and connect with others, a review of EFT research on PTSD, and descriptions of EFT written in language that connects with this group of people. It’s usable on home computers as well as mobile devices, and we encourage you to share BattleTap with anyone you know who’s suffering from PTSD.    battletap.org

I also offer sessions for vets via stressproject.org at no charge.

Colorado Tragedy – something that can ease the pain

My heart and prayers go out to all the people affected by the terrible shootings in Colorada.

I strongly hope that there are local mental health workers and or Certified EFT Practitioners in the area that are currently qualified to use EFT, Emotional Freedom Techniques, to help the families and friends of this horrific event.

EFT is an incredible tool, along the lines of energy psychology, that can quickly give lasting help and relief to people that have been in a tragedy.

I am currently working with military veterans that have PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, to help them release some of the old traumas, and better cope with current ones.  The results that we are getting via the Veteran’s Stress Project, www.stressproject.org are really impressive.

If we can get these same EFT tools to the hurting people in Colorado, it will be a big blessing, both now and into the foreseeable future for all involved.

Attention Vets: A New Recovery Option for PTSD – Nick Ortner

This is a very clear article on how effective EFT, or tapping, can be for veterans to deal with PTSD.   Article via Huffington Post.com, 4/21/12, Nick Ortner.

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In honor of Military Families Week, I wanted to share some of the incredible EFT work being done with veterans suffering from PTSD. The fact is, we’ve found an important tool that promotes recovery from PTSD in war veterans. It’s the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), otherwise known as Tapping, which combines Western psychotherapy with the Eastern “acupressure points” used in acupuncture.

EFT Tapping offers numerous important benefits for veterans suffering from PTSD:

• EFT Tapping, or Tapping, is easy, requires no equipment, and can be done anywhere for any amount of time.

• Tapping is providing recovery from severe PTSD in some veterans in a matter of days, whereas years of conventional talk therapy and medication often lead to little or no improvement.

• Tapping is providing deep, lasting relief from a wide range of PTSD symptoms — phobias, sleep issues, physical pain, mood and emotional issues, violent behavior, night terrors, substance abuse, and more.

• Tapping has no side effects, and can be practiced on your own at zero cost.

• You can do your own Tapping. (You can learn how in under 5 minutes.)

It sounds too good to be true, but the study findings to date are notable and beginning to gain serious consideration at a governmental level. EFT researchers Dawson Church, Ph.D., and David Feinstein, Ph.D., testified about their results treating PTSD in war veterans with EFT in front of Congress in July 2010, speaking to the House Veterans Affair Committee. The unfortunate reality, though, is that change on a massive scale, particularly at the governmental level, is painfully, in this case tragically, slow.

Treating PTSD in war veterans using Tapping is a topic I was first immersed in years ago, while filming The Tapping Solution, my documentary film tracking 10 people over a four-day Tapping retreat. All of the film participants shared one common trait. They were all desperate to find a long-term solution to their problems, from serious emotional issues to debilitating physical illnesses. One of the film’s subjects was Jon, a Vietnam veteran who had been suffering from severe PTSD for more than 30 years.

The transformation Jon underwent during that Tapping retreat was intense and profound, like the thousands of vets who have been cured of their PTSD as a result of The Stress Project. For Jon, our four-day Tapping retreat was the start of a new life — one free of the physical and emotional PTSD symptoms he’d experienced since returning from Vietnam in 1968.

Prior to the Tapping retreat, Jon’s daily life had become unsustainable to a degree most non-vets can hardly imagine. In addition to chronic back pain and diabetes from Agent Orange exposure, which had led to three mini-strokes, PTSD had ravaged Jon’s emotional and family life. Suffering deep-seated guilt at having killed so many Vietnamese, Jon’s kind, gentle demeanor had long ago turned grumpy and irritable. For years, Jon’s kids had systematically avoided him, afraid of dad’s angry reactions to the everyday noises they might make moving around their own home. His wife also reported that Jon had stopped smiling and never laughed.

During the four-day Tapping retreat, for the first time in 15 years Jon’s back pain went away. He also realized that he’d been depriving himself of a happy home life because of his guilt about hurting so many Vietnamese families. Since fighting in the war, in fact, Jon had been regularly returning to Vietnam as a volunteer, often staying away from home for weeks and months at a time. For years, he’d hoped that the time he spent helping the Vietnamese would eventually make up for the many lives he’d been forced to take during the war. Sadly, his volunteer time there never seemed to be enough. The pain of his guilt had remained just as intense, year after year.

After the Tapping retreat, however, Jon finally felt free, no longer weighed down by guilt. For the first time in years, he began enjoying being at home with his wife and kids, all of whom were amazed and thrilled by the changes in his mood and demeanor. While Jon continued traveling to Vietnam as a volunteer, he did so for shorter periods of time so he could return home to spend more time with his own family.

Thanks to the Tapping retreat, Jon also recovered completely from his phobia of rats, which he’d encountered in Vietnam during the war and his volunteer trips. By the end of the Tapping retreat, Jon’s rat phobia, which had haunted him deeply since the war, was so thoroughly resolved, he was able to hold a rat in his lap without experiencing any anxiety or stress.

However obvious it may be that Tapping changed Jon’s life, there’s no denying that he’s one veteran among millions. So many veterans and their families have tried multiple PTSD treatments over months and then years, only to be disappointed — again. I understand why, after so much heartbreak and frustration, people who haven’t tried Tapping remain skeptical about how well it works on PTSD in veterans.

The fact is, though, Jon is one of thousands of veterans who have recovered from PTSD with Tapping. As of the writing of this post, The Stress Project has treated 2,126 veterans with PTSD using EFT Tapping. That number, however, is truly the tip of the proverbial iceberg, a tiny shadow of the immense, wide-scale healing that’s possible for long-time PTSD sufferers.

If you know a veteran suffering from PTSD, I hope you’ll send them the link to this post and urge them to contact The Stress Project, which offers six free Tapping sessions to qualifying veterans.

It’s time to get over the fact that Tapping is new and relatively unknown and take action. Thousands of veterans and their families are suffering enormously every single day. We owe it to each other and them to spread the word about EFT Tapping, and how quickly and completely it is resolving the very real trauma haunting our veterans.

Nick Ortner is the creator and executive producer of the hit documentary film, “The Tapping Solution.” His new book on EFT will be published by Hay House in April 2013. To get a copy of his free eBook, “Tapping Your Way to Health, Happiness and Abundance” visit TheTappingSolution.com. Beginning on April 16th, he is launching The Tapping World Summit 2012, a free 10-day online Tapping event.

For more by Nick Ortner, click here.

 

Kids Zero to Three Age

Have you ever wondered what very young kids think and how they are influenced?  Try an all day Zero to Three intensive conference focused on military families, Veterans, and their kids!  Dare to Care II.

Tapping (Emotional Freedom Techniques), or EFT, is such a great tool to use with kids.  The very youngest may not understand the process, but I have learned and done surrogate tapping for very young kids.  Boy, is it effective.

Basically, you are tapping on and for the child, for whatever their immediate issue is.  Fever, pain, emotional distress, you name it.  Surrogate tapping can be such a valuable tool to apply in these situations.

Have you noticed a grown couple in a store or parking lot, obviously having a heated discussion?  Keep your distance and do surrogate tapping on their behalf.  There can be some amazing and very noticible results!

You are tapping for them, on their behalf, sort of as if you were them.  What would be their highest good at this moment?   Go for that.

Same with very young kids that don’t verbalize yet.  What do they need right now that they can’t access?  Tap for them, gently on them, see the benefits just show up.

I’m looking forward to tapping with military family kids very soon.  Who better to benefit from off-loading distressing emotional baggage?

Happy Tapping!